There being no longer any attraction for him in London, he decided to go straight through to Park Newton, as several matters there claimed his attention, and he went accordingly. He reached home about seven o'clock in the evening, much to the consternation of Mrs. Benson, his housekeeper, who had not expected him till the end of the week, and who was in the midst of a high festival of scrubbing and scouring. Among other places, Lionel's bedroom was in a topsy-turvy condition, and altogether unfit for occupation; so that Mrs. Benson, with many apologies, was compelled to ask him whether he would object to sleep in another room for that night only. Lionel, who was the most good-natured of men with his servants, made no objection to the change.
After his simple dinner was over, Lionel spent an hour among his letters and papers, and then took a cigar and his travelling cap with the intention of having a quiet smoke in the shrubbery. The night was clear and cold. There was no moon, but the stars were shining brightly. The footways were dry and pleasant to walk on, and Lionel lingered outside for nearly an hour, winding in and out among the maze of walks, and the thick clumps of evergreens, wherever his vagrant footsteps led him. His thoughts were with Edith. He was thinking of the time, so soon to come, when they should pace those pleasant walks together; when that dim old pile, which looked so majestic in the starlight, should call her mistress. There would be their home through all the happy years to come. His heart was full of solemn joy and gratitude: unbidden tears stood in his eyes: he felt that Heaven had been very kind to him. Then and there he registered a promise that the sick, the aged, and the poverty-stricken on his estate--and he knew already that they were many in number--should be made the special care of Edith and himself.
He was slowly retracing his steps when, as he turned the corner of a thick clump of holly only a few yards from the house, to his utter surprise he nearly stumbled over a man, who started up, from under his very feet as it seemed, and plunged at once into the depths of the shrubbery on the other side. For the moment Lionel was too much startled to think of pursuit, and a second thought convinced him that it would be useless to attempt any. The trees were thickly planted just there, and that part of the grounds was quite strange to him; besides, would it be worth his while to follow the intruder? The man, whoever he might be, had evidently been hiding, and had certainly no business there; but, in all probability, he was merely some young fellow from the village who had been sweethearting with one of the servants at the Hall, and had stayed beyond his time.
Nevertheless, when Lionel reached the house, he decided that, for once, he would look after the fastenings of the windows and doors himself. When he had satisfied himself that everything was secure, he took his candle and went off to his bed in the Dolphin. He was very tired and soon fell asleep. But Lionel had a trick--begotten of the time when he lay camping out in the wilds of North America, and had to sleep with his loaded rifle resting on his arm, and in constant dread of a surprise by hostile Indians--of waking up at the slightest noise at all out of the common way: waking up in a moment, completely, fully, and with all his wits about him. The old instinct did not desert him on the present occasion. He had been asleep for a couple of hours or so, when he was recalled in a moment from the land of dreams to life the most vivid and conscious, by the overturning of some heavy piece of furniture in the room immediately over that in which he was sleeping. He sat up in bed and listened with all his senses on the alert. But all was again as silent as the grave.
After two or three minutes he lay back in bed, still listening, but not so keenly as before; and trying to make out, from his knowledge of the house, which particular room it was from whence the noise proceeded that he had just heard.
All at once it struck him--and the thought sent a chill through his heart--that the room in question was none other than the Griffin--none other, in fact, than the room in which his Uncle Arthur had died. The more he thought of it, the more certain he felt that he was right. It was the Griffin without doubt But what could any living being be doing in that room of all others, and at that hour of the night? The room had been left untouched since his uncle's death, and, as far as he, Lionel, was concerned, was likely to be so left for some time to come.
It was always kept locked, too, although the key was not taken away but left outside the door; and all the servants, from Mrs. Benson downwards, had a superstitious dread of entering it. How, then, account for the noise he had heard, which certainly came from that room and from no other? With such thoughts in his mind, to sleep again, for some time to come, was out of the question. A quarter of an hour, or it might be twenty minutes, passed thus, and the silence was still unbroken. Then there came a sound, and Lionel started involuntarily as he heard it. It was the faint sound of footsteps--the noise made by some one moving slowly and cautiously across the floor of the room above. It was so faint, so muffled, so subdued, that at any other time than the middle of the night, and to any ears less keen than those now listening with all their might, it would have been altogether inaudible. If, for a moment, he had shivered at the recollection that it was in that very room his uncle had breathed his last--if, for a moment, some vague ghostly fancies had flitted across his mind, it was for a moment only. Involuntarily, and without any consciousness on his part, his mind seemed, in some strange way, to connect the dim half-seen figure that had melted before his eyes into the shrubbery, with the mysterious footsteps overhead.
It was the work of a very short time for Lionel to slip out of bed, light his candle, and partially dress himself. He had no weapon of any kind in his room, but, man against man, he was not afraid of any one; and that there was more than one person upstairs seemed highly improbable. He opened his room door as noiselessly as possible, and stole out into the corridor. He had to traverse one long passage, ascend a flight of stairs, and there, at the end of another passage, was the door of the room he was in quest of.
It was the state bedroom of the house, this room called the Griffin. None of the rooms near it were occupied: the servants all slept in the opposite wing. Had Lionel slept in his own room that night, the unknown intruder would have had one whole wing of Park Newton entirely to himself--a fact that was probably well-known and calculated upon. Along the chilly corridor and up the oaken staircase, lighted candle in hand, stole Lionel step by step, slowly and without noise. At the top of the staircase he paused and listened. Two or three minutes passed in silence the most profound. Had not his senses deceived him? he asked himself. Was it, indeed, the sound of mortal footsteps that he had heard? or nothing more than some of the vague, unaccountable noises, born of night and the darkness--moans, whispers, the creaking of doors, the rustling of ghostly garments--such as may be heard during the mute hours of sleep in any old house in which several generations of people have lived and died?
Some such thoughts as these were wandering through his mind--he was still listening intently--when the candle he was carrying dropped down into the socket, flared up suddenly for a moment, and then went out. Stooping to place the candlestick on the ground, and turning his head as he did so, what was his surprise to see a thin, faint streak of light shining from under the door at the end of the corridor! The sight of this braced his nerves like a tonic. A few swift strides brought him to the other end of the passage. It was the work of a moment to turn the key and fling wide open the door.
The late Mr. St. George's bedroom was a large but gloomy apartment, panelled with black oak, and having in one corner a huge funereal-looking bedstead, plumed and carved, and with a quantity of faded gilding about it, that matched well with the faded colours of the painted ceiling overhead. When Lionel flung open the door, an exclamation of surprise burst involuntarily from his lips. The cloaked figure of a man, with his back towards Lionel, and holding a dark lantern in one hand, was standing in front of a small cupboard or recess in the panelling--a hiding place evidently; but what he was doing there Lionel had not time to see. A moment later and the lantern was shut, and he and the stranger were alone in the dark.
As Lionel sprang forward to seize him, the stranger turned to fly. As he did so, there was a noise of money falling to the floor. Lionel seized him by the cloak, but that came away in his hands. Then he grasped him again, this time by the shoulder, and held him firmly. With a growl like that of a wild beast suddenly trapped, the stranger turned on Lionel, and before the latter could guess what he was about, or could defend himself in any way, he jerked his right arm free, and swinging